Megalithic tombs that originally date back to the early to mid-neolithic are the oldest preserved monument that can be found in Scandinavia. The act of raising big stone structures for the dead shows that the monuments where build to last through time. Prehistoric people from different time periods have reused these monuments on different locations all over Europe. This paper focuses on the monuments in Sweden and it shows that the reuse of megalithic monuments appears in all regions where these monuments can be found. The different reasons to why people wanted to reuse these monuments are also discussed. The paper proposes that the reasons are religious and political. Political the monuments can give inheritance rights which granted land rights among other things.

Ancient Uppsala is a most versatile place. At various times it has sated all types of scholar, nourished every kind of ideology, and fed all forms of doubt. Portrayals of the site have almost exclusively been made at times when it was necessary to define the relationship between the people and the elite, the elite and the Crown, or the Crown and the Church. These narratives take many forms – ancient myths, missionary tales, stories of princely power play, the struggle for social integration in early modern Sweden, or tales about absolute royal power, the free peasant, the oppressed serf, centralism, or the manipulation of history. Uppsala, almost without exception, was the stage on which vital scenes of this kind were played out. This type of narrative, of which there is no shortage, is the main focus of this thesis. It aims to analyse how the image of Viking Age and medieval Uppsala was formed and has changed at various times, to follow the threads of discussion, and to place ideas pertaining to the site in their historical and intellectual context. The thesis sheds light on two periods in particular: the Gothism of the seventeenth century, and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the latter period characterized by nationalism, racial biology, and political extremism.

The dreams (and nightmares) of scholars are contrasted with the Gamla Uppsala of reality. Abundant archive material readily allows us to follow the nature of daily life in Gamla Uppsala parish, and to analyse how its inhabitants protected themselves from the material and spiritual destruction of the site. Today, the most significant archaeological observations are often made in the archive, where ‘ancient’ remains are frequently reappraised as relatively mundane products of the more recent past.

13.

Alkarp, Magnus

Uppsala University, Humanistisk-samhällsvetenskapliga vetenskapsområdet, Faculty of Arts, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History.

In 1164 the "archbishopric of Sweden" was established at "Gamla Uppsala", once the political centre of the "Svear kingdom" in the late Iron Age and a stronghold of pre-Christian cult. This highly symbolic decision was manifested through the construction of one of the largest churches in Scandinavia.

The cathedral church at Gamla Uppsala was allegedly built on the same spot as the famous "pagan temple2 described by "Adam of Bremen" in the early 1070s. Excavations carried out there in 1926 revealed a highly complex stratigraphic sequence and a confusing set of postholes that were immediately interpreted as the remains of the temple. Though still maintained today in school textbooks and elsewhere, this conclusion is clearly erroneous as the postholes can be shown stratigraphically to belong to different phases of construction.

The exact events of the period c. 1050-1150 in Gamla Uppsala have never been satisfactorily understood, but there is clear evidence to suggest that the cathedral was by no means the first church to have been built on the site. In an effort to elucidate this early history of the church plateau, in 2003-04 the authors examined the area with ground-penetrating radar. In this paper we discuss some of the more important results of these investigations.

28.

Alpsten, Malena

Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History.

Alpsten, M. 2016. Athenaeus The learned banqueters. A study of the purpose and content from a beverage perspective

The objective of this paper is to explore the purpose or purposes with which the Greek author Athenaeus wrote his extensive work, The Learned Banqueters. The basis for this study is a survey of the different beverages, i.e. wine, water, milk, blood, beer and gruel, Athenaeus writes about in his work. The objective of the thesis is also to lift up what Athenaeus writes about these drinks. The Athenaeus text has been closed read (close reading) and various questions were posed to the text, a number of structural concepts have been used, and these, together with the above questions, are a good way to reveal Athenaeus’ purpose. The results have shown that Athenaeus probably wanted to write an encyclopedia, for his books show a strong desire to inform the reader about various phenomena and things. But it was no ordinary reference book he wrote but a reference book about Greek customs and traditions. His purpose was that in the Roman time he lived in influencing people to return to a, for him, remote but magnificent ancient Greece.

Etruscan art was greatly influenced by Greek art, which is especially apparent in the Etruscan funerary art. A common motif within Greek funerary art is the prothesis, the lying in state, which appears in Etruria during the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. However, the Etruscan scenes differ from the Greek scenes in that they portray a wider flexibility when it comes to gender roles. Women and men are not limited to gestures or positions within the scenes of prothesis. This in turn, along with other factors not discussed in this paper, has led to discussions of a more gender equal Etruscan society. Yet there is a specific gesture within the Etruscan scenes that is not found in the Greek material. The gesture in question, portrayed with both hands on the chest either in fists or placed one on top of the other, appears in other funerary art outside of the prothesis scenes. The aim of this thesis is to examine this gesture and its relation to gender and whether it is gender constricted. By analyzing and comparing funerary art limited to Chiusi and Vetulonia that includes the gesture, found in reliefs, statuettes as well as sculptures, this paper sets out to deepen our understanding of Etruscan gender roles.

Since the material being examined is extremely restricted, the only thing an analysis of this size can determine is that there is indeed a gender constriction within the funerary art from the cities of Chiusi and Vetulonia, speaking to a possible wider occurrence within the entire Etruscan society. To delve deeper into the questions of gender roles and how they affect the Etruscan art, it is necessary to broaden the scope of material – both in form and origin.

This paper is aimed at mapping important traits in a Hiberno-Norse identity. This is the main focus of the essay, but another important part is to problematize this using several theoretical approaches of which the main are identity, creolization and hybridization. The Hiberno-Norse culture being primarily an urban phenomenon, the thesis is delimited to the Hiberno-Norse towns with occasional comparisons to Scandinavia to see how the native Irish population influenced the invaders and how they gradually evolved into the Hiberno-Norse. Early on the Norse show signs of creolization that would ultimately lead to the creation of the Hiberno-Norse hybrid culture known from history and archaeology – an urban culture that show blended Norse and Irish features.

In my previous thesis I wrote about what features that characterize the Hiberno-Norse identity in Ireland during the Viking Age/Early Medieval period and the origin of these features. I also discussed whether they are to be viewed as a creolized Scandinavian society or as a hybrid culture with focus on said features. In this thesis I will attempt to shift the focus towards 9th and 10th century Gotland. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate if there were some connections between the Hiberno-Norse world and Gotland. I will focus on one particular hypothesis regarding the early import of Islamic dirhams, particularly Samanid silver to Ireland. The idea is to examine if a trading network might have existed and, in essence, to establish that there were connections between the Hiberno-Norse world and Gotland.

Humans are curious beings. We investigate and explore. We experiment and learn from them. But that process of learning is not very easy to study. Each person learns in different ways. The verbal part of learning is just one piece of the puzzle. The process of learning happens in many other ways, which makes is hard to study (especially in the past). The aim for this thesis is to examine whether experiment could be a tool to use in that research. It also aims to see if cultural transmission theory could be a theoretical base to study learning processes. The thesis describes experiments as a method, the relations between theoretical and practical memory and how culture is usually transmitted. It also studies two examples of experiments that were carried out in order to study learning. The thesis discusses the result of the experiments separately and in connection to cultural transmission theory. It discusses the possibilities of experiments as a method and its relation to the process of learning. It also discusses the relevance of modern novices.

In recent years there has been discussion of the many health benefits of the paleodiet, a diet that consist of food that we are evolutionary and genetically adapted to consume. The agricultural revolution introduced mankind to dietary changes that did not suit our biology, and is now the main reason for the nutrition-based diseases in developed countries.

The purpose of this paper is to review both the archaeological methods used to explain the paleodiet and the knowledge we have about our hunter-gatherer ancestors and to see if there is any evidence to claim that the paleodiet could be an answer to food-health related diseases. This paper will also discuss the different perspectives behind the many dietary changes in human evolution and how they reflect on man’s dietary conditions today.

The material used for this research is based on studies in anthropology, biology, genetics and epidemiology. The theory behind this paper is based on the positivism knowledge founded on properties and relations between measurable studies. Based on interpretations by reason and logic this paper is concluded through deductive reasoning.

The results show that food-related diseases and syndromes are absent from traditional hunter-gatherer societies and that they first start to manifest if a western-based diet is adopted. According to our evolutionary and biological structure, man is not adapted to consuming dairy or agricultural products and we are, in fact, genetically identical to our Paleolithic ancestors. Therefore, because we have the same dietary conditions as the paleo hunter-gatherer, we would be considerably more healthy if we adopted a Paleolithic based diet.

Within the field of archaeology, animal bones from the post-medieval era have often been treated with little interest. The potential information that could be gained from studying osteological materialsis not appreciated. Historical text from that period in time is thought to give information about historical events or places. However, information about different activities related to diet or economy, which are often missing from the historical sources, could instead be gained by analysing osteological materials. The material used in the proposed study consists of animal bones derived from a 17th century military facility located in Ljusdal, Hälsingland. Since the material consists of a relatively small amount of bones, an in depth analysis is possible. The analysis will reveal important information about activities related to economy in the military facility. The proposed study could establish animal bones as an important material that should be analysed when studying our more recent history.

This report includes field documentation and the results from the 2014 excavations and analysis of findings from Nygårds 1:28, Buttle parish on the farm Buttle Änge, Gotland, Sweden. The excavations held in 2014 at Änge, Buttle parish, were a continuation of surveys from 2009 and 2013 (see Andreeff, Melander & Bakunic Fridén 2014). The campaign was included in the research project Stones and People: Viking Age Picture Stones from the Island of Gotland, as well as part of field courses in archaeology held by Uppsala University. Excavations were led by Alexander Andreeff, assisted by Joakim Kjellberg, Victor Niels Love Melander, Jhonny Thérus, Paul Wallin, Kjel Knutsson and Gustaf Svedjemo all of whom are from Uppsala University. Excavations were divided into three main areas. The first area concerned the remains of metal production as well as the remains of cremation graves close to the picture stones Raä Buttle 42:1 and 42:2. The second area focused on two cultivation cairns, close to an ancient road and a gravel pit from the 20th century. The third area concerned an Iron Age settlement site with stone house foundations and a stone wall. Trenches 5, 20 and 21 were located in the first area, trenches 10 and 11 in the second and trenches 13-19 in the settlement site. In total an area of 446 m² was excavated including 12 trenches, 3 test pits, 54 features and 3129 registered find-posts.

In this report the field documentation and the results from the 2015 archaeological investigations at Nygårds 1:28, Buttle parish on the farm Buttle Änge, Gotland, Sweden, are presented. The excavations in 2015 are a continuation of surveys from 2009 and 2013-2014 (see Andreeff, Melander & Bakunic Fridén 2014; Andreeff & Melander 2015) conducted as field courses in archaeology by Uppsala University. The campaign is a part of Andreeff’s research projects Stones and People: Viking Age Picture stones from the Island of Gotland and Picture stone sites and Stone house foundations: Iron Age in the Gotlandic Inland. The field investigations were led by Alexander Andreeff, Paul Wallin and Alexander Sjöstrand, Uppsala University.

This dissertation investigates how far the organisation of a traditional technology corresponds to the degree of social complexity in a sedentary, agrarian society. An examination of the production of flint daggers during the Late Stone Age and Early Bronze Age of Scandinavia indicates the presence of formal apprenticeship systems based on corporate descent groups. Thus, the Late Neolithic societies in Scandinavia were more complex than previously thought. The flint dagger technology is subjected to an operational-chain analysis. This method is rooted in Durkeimian sociology and, consequently, technical gestures are regarded as social phenomena that are learned in social contexts. Two important concepts form the basis of my investigation: (1) knowledge (connaissance) and (2) know-how (savoir-faire). Knowledge has an explicit and declarative character and can be communicated to others; it can be passed from teacher to pupil by word of mouth, signs or written language. Know-how is an unconscious memory that springs from practical experience only. It is intuitive, connected with body movements and can only be learned by practical repetition. The gestures involved in each of the defined dagger-production stages were graded according to their relative degree of knowledge and know-how during practical experiments. Some stages were based on simple knowledge and a low degree of know-how. Other stages demanded a fair proportion of knowledge, in the form of recipes for action, and very high degree of know-how. This suggests that the craftsmanship was handed down through the generations by a form of apprenticeship system based on hereditary principles. The logic behind this reasoning is twofold. First, in such a system, the time needed to transmit know-how through the generations made the principle of kinship the most convenient mechanism for recruitment. Second, flint and manufacturing skills were valuable assets that stimulated some form of limited access and thus regulations of group membership. Accordingly, fixed social institutions were present in the Late Neolithic communities of Scandinavia and the presence of such formal institutions are indications of a fairly high level of social complexity. The flint-technology therefore entailed a highly developed craftsmanship, and the flint daggers were distributed over large areas of northern and central Europe by corporate groups or by regional and local elites. This interpretation is also related to Pierre Bourdieu's theory of practice. Terms such as symbolic capital and habitus are used to give social meaning to the technology and its role, actively and metaphorically, in the reproduction of the Scandinavian Late Neolithic communities.

47.

Apel, Jan-Erik

et al.

Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History.

Bäckström, Ylva

Hallgren, Fredrik

Knutsson, Kjel

Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History.

A discussion of the TRB cultural landscape and form of society is attempted on the basis of the excavation of an Early Neolithic Funnel-beaker settlement site at Fågelbacken in eastern central Sweden. The site, situated on top of an esker, is characterized by finds of TRB pottery, quartz and flint debitage, pits with charred human bones, a cultbuilding and D-shaped huts. As a result of intra-site spatial analysis, ceramic analysis and a discussion of the site features, it is suggested that Fågelbacken should be interpreted not only as a coastal hunting site but also as a repeatedly visited, communal ritual site. A spatial analysis of thin-butted axes in the area surrounding the site, suggests that it is probably one of a whole series of similar, evenly spaced, ritual sites in the area. A sociocultural interpretation of Funnel-beaker huts and houses, together with an analysis of the distribution of stray finds of TRB type in the research area, further suggests that coastal sites like Fågelbacken are structurally related to groups of swidden-agriculture farmsteads and hunting stations in the interior.

48.

Apelman, Marcus

Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History.